DBU Sylvia Plaths Poem Daddy Question

Please offer thoughtfully developed responses to the questions posted at the end of the Szalavitz essay, under the section “Thinking about the Text” (NOT the “Writing about Issues” section) – page 574. Keep in mind all the argument components we covered in class. Any argument connections you can establish b/w this essay and our building blocks will be a huge plus.

Youdonotdo,youdonotdo

Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time — Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset.°
I used to pray to recover you.

Ach, du.°

In the German tongue, in the Polish Town° Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.

My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,°
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you. And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.° I began to talk like a Jew. IthinkImaywellbeaJew.

The sno ws of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy-ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc° pack and my Taroc pack

ImaybeabitofaJew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luwaffe,° your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man,° O You —

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cle in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf° look

And a love of the rack and the screw. AndIsaidIdo,Ido.

So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two — The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.